The $500 Million Nile Towers Still Face Warraq

KSH Investment Company and Safwat Kaliouby Group signed a $500 million deal in July 2024 for three towers and a hotel overlooking Warraq Island. The plot sits in Tanash, on the Nile bank, and the partners put the build cost at EGP 24 billion, the same $500 million at the rate they used.

They gave themselves four years. More than two years on, cranes on that bank have not shown up in any public file, while the island in the brochure view is still in a fight over homes, ferries, and who gets to stay.

Three Towers, a Hotel and a Nile View

The July 2024 Tanash partnership covers 20,000 square meters and three high-rise buildings for homes and shops, plus a five-star hotel. Completion was described as expected within four years, which would run to about July 2028 if the clock started at the signing.

Abdul Jalil Abdurrahman Al-Balouki, managing director of the private department behind KSH, tied the deal to jobs and growth. Ahmed Mansour, chief executive of that same office, said the work with SKG was meant to spread to other sites in Cairo, Sheikh Zayed City, and the North Coast. Safwat Kaliouby, SKG’s chair, called it a step in Egypt-UAE property work and said Tanash infrastructure would lift life for people nearby.

This project reflects the private office’s commitment to investing in strategic initiatives that enhance economic growth and create job opportunities.

Abdul Jalil Abdurrahman Al-Balouki, Managing Director, Private Department of Sheikh Mohamed bin Khalid Al Nahyan

The location line did the selling. Tanash looks across the water at Warraq, a Nile island in Giza that the state has tried for years to turn into a planned city of towers, parks, and a corniche. Some write-ups blurred that geography and put the private towers on the island itself. The papers put them on the bank, selling the view.

Warraq Has Been the Prize Since 2017

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, speaking in June 2017 about land he said had been taken without right, pointed to an unnamed Nile island of more than 1,250 feddans and asked where the sewage went. Security forces moved onto Warraq on July 16, 2017, to carry out demolition orders. Clashes followed. Sayed Ali al-Gizawy, a young resident, was killed.

Ibrahim Ezzeldin, writing for the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, put nearly 100,000 residents of Warraq on an island of about 1,400 feddans between Cairo and Giza, a working mix of farming, fishing, and trades. A Cambridge study of the dispute walks through how Egyptian law treats Warraq land when the state calls it public and families hold contracts and registries.

Cabinet Decree 20 of 2018 handed the New Urban Communities Authority a new town on the island. In July 2022 the State Information Service rolled out a plan under the name Horus City, costed at EGP 17.5 billion, with projected revenue of EGP 122.54 billion over 25 years. The drawings included eight investment zones, luxury housing, a central park, two marinas, and a tourist corniche. By July 2024, the Housing Ministry said it had cleared 993 of 1,295 feddans marked for the rebuild, more than 76 percent of that target area.

NINE YEARS ON THE ISLAND

1. June 2017: Sisi flags a Nile island of more than 1,250 feddans in a land-recovery speech.
2. July 16, 2017: Forces move to demolish houses. Clashes kill Sayed Ali al-Gizawy.
3. 2018: Decree 20 lets the New Urban Communities Authority found a new town on Warraq.
4. July 2022: Horus City is costed at EGP 17.5 billion, with eight investment zones on the drawings.
5. July 9, 2024: KSH and SKG sign for three towers and a hotel on the Tanash bank facing the island.
6. October 16, 2025: Madbouly orders a fast handover of replacement flats as 50 of 94 state towers stand complete.
7. August 18, 2026: Residents deliver a written demand to stay and to receive land inside the plan.

That sequence is the setting the Tanash hotel would have sold. The private towers were never the island project. They were designed to look at it.

Who Signed the $500 Million Papers?

KSH is the investment arm of the Private Department of Sheikh Mohamed bin Khalid Al Nahyan, an Abu Dhabi family office with roots in the 1960s, not the Crown Prince’s household. The office later kept writing large cheques elsewhere. In August 2025 it closed AED 3 billion ($816 million) of property financing. On July 7, 2026, it committed $1.13 billion to MidOcean Energy, an LNG platform run with EIG.

SKG is a Cairo holding group run by Safwat Kaliouby. Its own site lists 37 years in business, 2 Billion in annual turnover, more than 4,000 staff, five lines of work, and 12 countries. Real estate sits under Truman for Real Estate and Tourism Development. The news pages on that site talk about traffic radars, vehicle inspection centres, and RFID tags. They do not mention Tanash, Warraq, or a Nile hotel.

SKG IN ITS OWN FIGURES

• Years running: 37 years of operation, per the group’s site.
• Turnover: 2 Billion a year, as the company states it.
• People: More than 4,000 employees across five sectors.
• Reach: Work in 12 countries, with Truman as the property vehicle.

The Tanash signing came months after Abu Dhabi’s ADQ agreed a $35 billion package for Ras El Hekma on the north coast, a 170-square-kilometre city in which Egypt kept a 35 percent stake and officials spoke of as much as $150 billion over time. Gulf cash was already the country’s main external bet. A Nile hotel of this size sat in that slipstream, smaller than Ras El Hekma and aimed at a river view rather than a new coast city.

The State Got to 50 Towers First

While the private file stayed quiet, the state’s island file did not. Housing Minister Sherif El-Sherbiny told Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly on October 16, 2025, that the urgent phase on Warraq called for 94 towers with 4,092 housing units. Fifty of those towers were already up, holding 2,184 flats. Madbouly ordered a prompt handover of more than 2,000 ready housing units to eligible families, plus a Nile promenade and a central park.

Cabinet spokesman Mohamed El-Homsani, after a December 2, 2025 meeting, repeated the same 94-tower, 4,092-unit package and said compensation was still being paid under the options on offer. Osama Shawky, then head of the New Warraq City Development Authority, sat in that room. So did Giza’s security director. The state was building on the island at a scale that dwarfs three private towers on the far bank.

THE TWO NILE PROJECTS

Those are not rival bids for the same plot. They are two faces of one river. The state pours concrete on Warraq. The private deal sold a look at that concrete, and at whatever is left of the old island around it.

A Silent March and a List of Demands

Dozens of residents walked to the New Warraq City Development headquarters on August 18, 2026, and handed over a written list. They had launched a campaign they called Staying on Warraq, after years of family councils and after a summer of blocked building supplies, ferry arguments, and stone-throwing at the Qolaly crossing. One man who went to the handover said people had gone quiet out of despair and were speaking again.

We started coming together and speaking up again after nine years. So many people had reached a point of despair, thinking the government would give us nothing and had taken away our rights. Today’s gathering brings hope back.

Warraq resident at the August 18, 2026 handover, speaking on condition of anonymity

The Friday statement before that walk said the island had lived on informal promises for nearly 10 years. The Housing Ministry, days after a sit-in at a materials ferry, denied that the New Warraq authority had allowed construction supplies onto the island. Residents wanted those supplies, a health unit with medicine, the youth centre and post office restored, cheap sewage trucks, and the checkpoints off the ferries.

WHAT THE AUGUST LIST ASKED FOR

• Land on the island: A plot inside the rebuild area so families who stay can build replacement homes on a set timetable.
• Cases dropped: Lawsuits against younger residents tied to earlier security clashes taken off the books.
• Daily services: A working clinic, post, youth centre, waste cleared, and sewage pumping at a price people can pay.
• Open ferries: Building materials allowed in, and security posts at the crossings removed.

By September 6, 2026, the movement said it would talk. People close to those talks described an offer that would let the dense “residential block” stay put and give outlying households a choice of flats off the island, state towers, or plots inside land the government already held. Security officials, in a later round, spoke of about 1,000 apartments on an apartment-for-apartment, meter-for-meter basis. Residents had long asked for about 300 feddans on the island itself, a figure that also appears in an earlier Shawky sketch for a block left in place. Mesh barriers went up at Qolaly in mid-September. Clashes returned. Late September posts from the island still showed people in the street against being moved.

The louder problem is not a shortage of drawings. It is that a hotel on the Tanash bank would look at an island where the state already has 50 towers up and where families still argue over whether a flat in a tower counts as a home. Gulf money in Egypt keeps finding hotels and river towers. It is harder to find the factory that the July 2024 signing never claimed to be.

No Public Trace of the Tanash Cranes

KSH’s later deals show an office that still writes big tickets. SKG’s site shows a group that still talks about radars and inspection bays. Neither has, in any statement found after July 2024, posted a groundbreaking, a sales launch, or a delay notice for Tanash. Lifestyle pages were still republishing the original 20,000-square-meter brief in 2026, dated as if it were new.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The signing: KSH and SKG announced three towers, a five-star hotel, EGP 24 billion, and a four-year build on July 9, 2024.
• The view: The plot is in Tanash, on the bank, looking at Warraq, not sitting on the island.
• The other file: The state’s island project had 50 of 94 towers up by October 16, 2025, with more than 2,000 flats ready to hand over.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Ground broken: No public construction update from KSH or SKG on the Tanash towers after the signing.
• A halt: Silence is not a cancellation notice. None has been issued in the record reviewed here.
• The other cities: Mansour named Cairo, Sheikh Zayed City, and the North Coast as further ground. No later project sheets were posted for those either.

The four-year window still runs to 2028. On the island in the picture, talks over land, flats, and ferries were still open in September 2026, and the state’s towers were the ones already on the skyline.